Russian climbers say they scaled Shanghai Tower at night

By Yang Jian |
February 13, 2014, Thursday
|
Online Edition

Program Code: 0909346140205004 | A video shows two Russian men climbing to the top of the still-under-construction Shanghai Tower in Pudong.

TWO Russian adventurers said they climbed the 632-meter, unfinished Shanghai Tower and performed a skywalk without any safety gear on China’s tallest and the world’s second-tallest building, the climbers announced today.

In pictures they posted on the Internet, Vadim Makhorov and Vitaly Raskalov, nicknamed “Urban ninjas,” scaled cranes on the top of the building and took pictures with a bird’s eye view of Shanghai.

The pair said on the Internet that they had to wait for the cover of darkness to climb the stairs of the tower in order to avoid the authorities, making their ascent even more dangerous.

“There are a lot of guards and cameras around in the day time, so we started climbing during the night. It was easier to stay unnoticed that way,” said Vadim.

No independent verification of the stunt was available.

They said it took about two hours to get to the top, where they waited for hours for clouds to appear that would show a view like something from an aircraft window.

“We were not afraid at all and we have never had any injuries as a result of our sky walking,” they told UK media.

The pair said they didn’t get any sleep for over 24 hours before the mission, which was “physically and mentally challenging” for them.

“Our target was to climb the highest tower in China and the second-highest in the world, it felt amazing to accomplish it. The sky is the limit,” they said.

They dodged guards to climb onto the Great Pyramid of Giza and later posted pictures on the Internet.

A daredevil French climber had scaled the Jin Mao Tower in 2007 and was later detained for five days by local police after he got onto the top.